1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a system and method for tracking the activity of caller/clients visiting recipients, more particularly, the invention relates to a system and method for communicating with a remote caller/client and then identifying details of a caller/clients visit including such details as identifying the caller/client and the caller/client""s location.
2. Description of Related Art
Many businesses provide products and services requiring that employees visit the recipients of the products and services. For instance, many health care providers send nurses to the homes of patients. Similarly, parcel delivery services deliver parcels directly to businesses and individuals. These businesses will frequently benefit from tracking when their employees arrive at and depart from particular locations.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,183 to Katz discloses a computer system for recording remotely, through a telephone network, the arrival and departure times of field based employees at various work sites. The system detects from a calling employee automatic number identification data (ANI) and further accepts personal identification codes from the caller. The ANI is used to identify the calling telephone.
Personal identification codes which are manually entered into a keypad can be entered by any individual. Accordingly, mere receipt of a manually entered personal identification code does not assure that the person entering the personal identification code is the person assigned to the personal identification code.
An ANI identifies the phone which made an incoming call. When the phone is a standard land line phone, the phone identity can be used to identify the address where the phone is located. However, if the phone used to make the incoming call is a cellular phone, the ANI alone cannot be used to determine the location of the phone.
When the caller/client is provided with or has access to a telephone, a system and method for monitoring caller/clients is needed which can accurately identify a caller/client making the phone call and can identify the location of the phone call when the phone call is placed from a wireless phone, such as an analog or digital cellular phone, or a phone communicating directly through a satellite. However, if the caller/client is provided with a global position sensor type device which is capable of periodically recording the position of the device, it is also desirable to provide the device with the ability to accurately identify the presence of the caller/client at each recorded position.
A method for tracking a caller/client is disclosed. In one embodiment the method comprises the act of receiving a phone call from the caller/client. In another embodiment the caller/client may be provided with a global position sensor recording device. In either embodiment, the method also comprises the act of receiving from the caller/client, a biometric identifier resulting from a unique physiological characteristic of the caller. The method further comprises the act of comparing the biometric identifier with a client database correlating clients with their physiological characteristics. The method also comprises the act of selecting which of the physiological characteristics in the client database corresponds to the caller/client biometric identifier to identify the client.
In a particular embodiment of this invention, the method comprises the act of receiving a wireless phone call from a caller. The method also comprises the acts of identifying a caller/client geographic location of the phone call and comparing the caller/client geographic location with a database correlating addresses with geographic locations. The method further comprises the act of selecting from among the geographic locations included in the database the geographic location correlated with the caller/client geographic location to obtain an address.
The method of this invention also comprises the acts of receiving and/or recording a biometric identifier of the caller/client and identifying the origin of the phone call.
The system of this invention includes location identification mechanism for recording locally recording or transmitting and then recording the location of a caller/client, and a caller/client identification mechanism which will only indicate the presence of the caller/client at a specific location when the caller/client is physically present at that specific location. More particularly, the location identification mechanism may include a telephone accessed at the current location of the caller/client, or a global positioning sensor carried by the caller/client, and a biometric identifier sensing device accessible to the caller/client at the caller/clients current location.